If you blinked, you might’ve missed it: another U.S. military strike ordered personally by President Trump — this time on a “drug-smuggling” boat off the coast of Venezuela. Six people were killed, and the president is already calling them “narcoterrorists.”
Video footage released by the administration shows a small vessel idling at sea before it’s obliterated by what looks like a drone strike. No warning, no international partner announcement, no congressional approval. Just Trump on Truth Social taking a victory lap, bragging that he used his “Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief.”
Here’s the thing: this wasn’t a battlefield. It wasn’t even in U.S. waters. It was in international waters, near Venezuela — a country we’re not at war with. So why is the U.S. launching missiles there?
Trump says it’s part of his “new maritime campaign” against what he calls “narcoterrorists” — a term that legally blurs the line between drug traffickers and foreign combatants. If you can call them “terrorists,” then you can claim the right to kill them. No trial, no due process, no oversight.
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
This is now the fifth such strike since September. By the administration’s own count, 27 people have been killed in similar operations, all justified under the same vague “self-defense” logic. Congress has asked questions — but so far, the White House isn’t answering them. Senate Republicans even blocked a resolution that would’ve required formal authorization for these kinds of attacks.
Critics are calling it an abuse of power; Trump’s allies call it “leadership.” Both can be true — depending on whether you think the President of the United States should have the right to conduct extrajudicial killings at sea in the name of “law and order.”
Let’s be clear: drug cartels are violent, dangerous organizations. But when you start bombing boats in international waters without congressional approval or independent verification, you’re not just fighting drug traffickers — you’re rewriting the rules of war.
What happens if the next “drug boat” belongs to a fisherman? What happens when another country decides it has the same right to take “defensive action” against people it labels as criminals?
Every president tests the limits of executive power. Trump seems intent on demolishing them altogether.
So yes — maybe this was about drugs. But maybe it was also about dominance, headlines, and reminding the world who’s in charge of America’s trigger finger.
And for anyone paying attention, that should be a lot scarier than one boat going up in flames.
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